Tools Project category questions

From [[http://cpsquare.org CPsquare]], the community of practice on communities of practice.

... part of the technology for communities project, started off by the authors of [Digital Habitats], Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith.

Project Contributing Category

To be addressed later on:

• cost

For text:

• How do you assess a vendor?

What do we do with all the stuff that was under platform issues

• open source or proprietary
• installed base

pricing models

• Cost level
• Technology support
• Initial configuration cost
• Ongoing config and support costs

Social Context Support

• Community for community stewards
• user community
• Precursors
• Product map/plan
• consulting services

Technical Performance

• hardware requirements
• Server OS considerations
• Bandwidth requirements
• Special low bandwidth interface
• programming language(s)
• programmatic interface
• response time
• Scalability

Technical Interoperability

• User operating system
• client required?
• Enterprise software
• web-services
• Data base
• exportability
• calendar coordination
• online/offline
• email compatibility
• firewall issues

Programmers and Non Programmers

• customization method
• skill level for customization
• who can make changes
• tool extensibility
• skill level for tool customization
• programming language
• programmatic interface

Who uses the software

• examples of clients
• associated processes

Intermodality

• record and save
• chat/discussion integration
• one-click opening of a chat or phone sessions
• file upload
• Full URL addressability

Platform comments

• unique facets of product
• advantages/disadvantages